With A Brooklyn Accent: "Political Correctness" or Common Sense: The Racialized Rhetoric of Donald Trump.

"Political Correctness" or Common Sense: The Racialized Rhetoric of Donald Trump.

I am not coming to the ‪#‎StopTrump‬ movement from an "Ivy Tower" perspective. My coaching experiences in Brooklyn actually have a lot more to do with my opposition to him than my academic training.

During the 80's and early 90's when Brooklyn was a racial tinderbox, I was coaching CYO basketball and sandlot baseball. I took racially mixed teams from my neighborhood into all white neighborhoods like Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, and Howard Beach and into all Black and Latino neighborhoods like Red Hook, East Flatbush and the neighborhoods near the Farragut houses.

Everyone in these neighborhoods knew how dangerous a time we lived in. And they practiced incredible self restraint. No matter how angry coaches, parents and players got, they NEVER were allowed to refer to the race of an opposing players, much less use a racial slur. This discipline was universally practiced whether the neighborhood was white or Black and Latino. At literaly hundreds of games, some of which involved fierce arguments. The one time that discipline was broken, by parents from a team in Flatbush, I had to break up a near riot at our local gym